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Need A New Laptop?

Alright so I need a new laptop, I have about 750$ and I will be buying it in Canada. I would like an HD display, very powerful i5 or i7, with 8gb of ram and dedicated graphics card, as I would like to use this laptop for graphic design and video-editing. I want a laptop that I can also multitask on without it being slow or laggy. Any suggestions?

Also what is better: Faster processor with integrated intel hd 4000 or slower processor with dedicated gpu, for what I will be doing (graphic design and video editing, multitasking, watching youtube and surfing the web)

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All Answers

For what you will be doing, I wouldn't recommend a laptop at all. Graphics work is very ill suited to laptops for a number of reasons.

That being said, I'd say you need to choose between a lesser CPU and bigger display or better CPU and smaller display. Kind of a tough call if you're doing graphics work.

Also, in the event you like to be something of a socially conscious consumer, Asus may not be the brand to buy. Had a friend who worked for them not too long ago. The racial discrimination in that place was both blatant and rampant based on what I've heard from him and a few others. My friend is a pretty easy going guy, and if he dislikes someone it's never because they're white, asian, black or whatever, it's because they did X, Y, or Z that annoyed him. So he gets put into a group of 4 asians and one black. Asus never gives him any training (literally zero training. I was also skeptical about that at first, but he was quite adamant), they repeatedly tell him that they don't have certain resources, but somehow his Asian coworkers manage to get those resources that allegedly don't exist, and the Asians in his group don't waste much time making for a hostile work environment. After several months he finally calls them out on it, and since almost everyone at Asus is Asian, guess who gets fired when it is an issue between the one non-Asian and the four Asians? Is it just coincidence that the number of non-Asians in the company barely breaks double digits, or that pretty much every member of the upper management in the company is Asian? Maybe, but it all seems a little too coincidental if you ask me.

There are other reasons why you may want to reconsider Asus. They kept some of the worst habits from their former parent company Acer. They have a large number of models that have only minor differences, which they are very (notorious even) bad about stocking repair parts for. It's not uncommon for people to wait several weeks, even months, to get their laptop repaired. Half the time the parts have to come over on the slow boat from China which alone takes about 2 weeks. As much as I'm not a fan of the way Apple does business, I absolutely cannot fault them on their commitment to stocking repair parts. No vendor I have ever personally worked with or have reliable second hand knowledge of, holds a candle to them. Dell comes in something of a distant second, mostly because they outsource the warranty part fulfillment to a third party after a model's first year. Still, very rarely did I have an issue getting a part from them when I did Dell warranty work back in the day. Dell is also a much easier company to do business with than Apple. Apple seems to think that any level of financial arrangement between your company and theirs gives them the right to tell you how to run your business, which they are never shy about doing. They will forever compare you to their own retail stores, and expect you to do everything exactly the same, but if you ever start to become even a hint of a threat to those stores, they will land on you like an 800lbs gorilla who brought along some of his friends. They will ride you incessantly about one specific thing until you've turned your business upside down to make them happy, then they will decide they don't care about that specific thing anymore, now they care about this other specific thing, which is basically the exact opposite of what they said was absolutely crucial to the continued good working relationship between the two companies. You'll feel a bit like Sisyphus, forever pushing that rock up the hill only to have roll back down and start all over again.

Anyway, I digress. Just one of those situations where I can both be helpful and a good friend at the same time. If you do not care about giving money to a company like those described above, disregard everything I said. Also, to be clear, these are my opinions alone. I don't work for CNet or CBS in any capacity, they had nothing to do with anything I said aside from making these forums available. Far be it from anyone wanting to upset the great and glorious company from the South Bay's Cupertino with it's hair trigger on the lawyer button, or it's somewhat smaller cousin over in the East Bay's Fremont.

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